Welcome to the Vortex

 

John Michael Greer´s latest essay.

Talking back to flying heads

Alter Ego

 

So I just saw a French science documentary, "Alter Ego", on Swedish TV about cloning. Artificial human cloning of non-human animals, to be exact. Remember Dolly the cloned sheep? For whatever reason, the European Union bans this kind of cloning, so the industry thrives in the rest of the world. In the docu, they interview Americans and Argentinians who clone horses (including race horses), Chinese who clone pet dogs, and a hyper-modern lab in the United Arab Emirates financed by the Emir of Dubai which clone dromedaries (camel races are popular in some nations). In the United States, there are supposedly cloned deer with exactly the qualities a wild-game hunter wants!

There are also discussions to clone mammoths and other extinct animals, such as the dodo. Maybe this is a bit too much hype? One scientist actually believes that cloning birds is extremely difficult to impossible. Another opines that "cloned mammoths" would really be genetically enhanced elephants which can live in cold weather! However, the cloned foal of a Przewalski´s horse (this species or sub-species is extinct in the wild) is real, so here is a possible avenue to save endangered species. It seems cloning can even enhance the genetic diversity of a species. The two-humped Bactrian camel (which is almost extinct in the wild) is mentioned as the object of another possible rescue mission. 

The documentary doesn´t discuss human cloning and no Raëlians are interviewed. The production is clearly pro-cloning and I do wonder after watching it why the EU has banned cloning. How does this help us? How does it help the animals? Is it just some weird superstition? On our "enlightened" continent! In reality, the applications are almost endless. Imagine killing off all wolves, but keeping their DNA around for future re-creation just in case. 

Hmmm...    

Everyone gets their own pony

 

Is this some kind of a joke? And at a YouTube channel which attacks pseudo-science, to boot! But then, there is a slightly jocular tone in this presentation...

The clip is about "obscure solutions to the Fermi paradox". Most are cornucopian in nature. Maybe the aliens are throwing a never-ending psychedelic party inside a black hole? Maybe they live inside a super-computer floating around in intergalactic space? Try locate it, it´s like trying to find a needle in intergalactic space...

Or maybe the aliens are invisible god-like beings who, after giving everyone a free pony, simply self-destruct when realizing that existence is ultimately pointless.

The most interesting proposal is that alien intelligence is so strange that humans simply can´t detect it. This reminds me of Rupert Sheldrake´s idea that the sun is alive. The analogy used in the video is an ant which can´t comprehend a computer. For the ant, the computer is just another feature of the landscape. Little does it know that it´s the product of a powerful "divine" intelligence, shit posting stupid videos on something called "the internets".

Maybe existence is pointless, after all. 

The hiddenness of Dyson Spheres

 

A lot of cope in the YouTube commentary section right now as a new paper *again* disproves the existence of Dyson Spheres. The techno-freaks claim that maybe they are - wait for it - invisible. 

Yeah, so the hiddenness of God counts as evidence against God, but the hiddenness of Dyson Spheres doesn´t count as evidence against Dyson Spheres? Funny how that works.  

I think the concept of a Dyson Sphere says more about the cornucopian fever dreams of modern (human) civilization, than it does about aliens... 

The Tao of Panpsychism

 

This is a somewhat weird episode of the Why Files, usually a paranormal show about ghosts and UFOs. Here, TJ and his comic foil Hecklefish boldly go where no man has ever gone before...at least since around 1980. 

The episode combine New Age spirituality, fringe science, and cornucopian dreams about space conquest. Even Carl Sagan is featured, saying that it makes a lot of sense to revere the stars! We are star stuff, after all. Frankly, I wonder who wrote this script? It´s almost fascinating to listen to this retro stuff in 2025. 

Unfortunately, real reality makes itself felt when TJ and his muppet have to pitch their sponsors in the beginning of the clip. I kind of want to believe the uplifting message of "Nuclear Powered Evolution", but I think most of us will lose our sponsors in the decades ahead...   

Mission to Mars

 

A call to order from Sabine Hossenfelder (again). Of course humanity can´t go to Mars, terraform it, or whatever. Elon Musk is simply bonkers. Or a grifter? Funny that comedian Bill Maher is the voice of reason on this one!

We´re stuck on this rock, guys. Deal with it. But then, it does seem to be the only rock in this part of infinite spacetime that can actually harbor life.

Imagine being stuck in a somewhat insecure dome far away on Mars. Shades of "Total Recall"...   

The arrival of Siegfried

 

Our man JMG continues his analysis of Richard Wagner´s seminal opera "The Nibelung´s Ring". Note the comments on child psychology and alternative schooling!   

The Nibelung´s Ring: Siegfried 1

The Future Police

 

An article from 2022 about a bizarre new cult in California. It seems to have exactly two members, both of whom are pretty kookish while fancying themselves to be Übermenschen. Still, there is something disturbing and familiar about "House Collins" or "The Future Police", as they style themselves (all two of them). 

Yes, there seems to be a connection to more "respectable" views held by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the so-called longtermists. That, and more! Think elitism, eugenics, pronatalism, AI worship, transhumanism... 

Is this the actual new "religion" of the super-rich of late capitalism/modernity?  

The Religion of the Future Police

Finders Keepers

 

An interesting presentation about the Finders, a shadowy American group somewhere midbetween counter-cultural collective, child trafficking ring and CIA front operation. They were briefly featured in the media during the late 1980´s, but the police investigation against them was quickly dropped, the media changed their narrative (apparently, the Finders were weird but not Satanists), and very little was heard of the group...until previously classified FBI files were released in 2019. With all the concrete CIA-related allegations redacted out, obviously. Which kind of proves the point anyway...

What makes the Finders interesting is (of course) that they came to temporary prominence during the "Satanic Panic", which according to Skeptics was just a mass hysteria based on baseless conspiracy theories. But here, we have a group with Satanic overtones abusing children while working for the CIA. And since nothing ever happened to them, it´s plausible that somebody in the Agency had their backs...

Must be some kind of anomaly, right? 

Floating head

 

Some really trippy shit in this one! It´s the beginning of "Zardoz", the bizarre cult film starring Sean Connery as anything but James Bond.

Have only seen this film once, like 35 years ago or so! But yes, I distinctly remember the floating head and the absurd masks...

Dude! 

Trump´s secret cabal?

 

I don´t think Sabine Hossenfelder takes the (de)population crisis seriously, per the second video, apparently hoping that birth rates will bounce right back (and right up) in the future...forgetting her own fears of a severe climate crisis for the moment. 

Even so, the first video (posted last year) is still quite interesting. It deals with "longtermism", a murky philosophy loosely connected to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. On the one hand, longtermists believe in perpetual progress, the conquest of the galaxy, and such. For that reason, the current generation must make sacrifices for the benefit of future ones. The main "sacrifice" seems to be having more children. 

However, the longtermists also oppose aiding victims of famine and disaster *today*, arguing that future lives are worth billions more. They have a fratricidal relationship to a movement known as Effective Altruism, headed by none other than Peter Singer, which supports such aid. It seems many supporters of longtermism are former fanboys of Singer who switched sides! 

Of course, a cabal of elite intellectuals backed by the super-rich who want to sacrifice one billion people (implied in one of the texts quoted in the video) is bound to arise suspicion. Especially if it´s coupled with a vision of a world ruled by technocrats and big capitalists. It seems the futuristic plans of the longtermists have very concrete consequences in the present. I mean, who knew? Presumably the plan is to stop depopulation, while getting rid of "the dead weight" at the same time. Somehow, the longtermists imagine that this will save the (globalist) system. Or is it *their* system, perhaps?

It may or may not be significant that Musk and Thiel both back Trump. But then, Soros and other zillionaires back the Democrats. So there´s that.

Personally, I wouldn´t worry. I mean, what are the chances that any of these factions have any kind of solutions whatsoever, even to *their own* predicament?   

An Anthropocene we can believe in

 

"I´m beginning to suspect that the Cornucopia thing was just a load of hype!" 

The logick of the Houyhnhnms

 

Isn´t this dangerous or something? I mean, the Houyhnhnms could catch some dangerous disease from that pesky little Yahoo! 

Animal rights in a stelliferous future

 

The YouTube channel metaRising or Waking Cosmos (henceforward WC) is interesting when it explores panpsychism and similar topics, but it also has a “cornucopian” tendency I strongly dislike. Like in the “documentary” above, “Dystopian Futures: Risks of Astronomical Suffering”. 

We are talking “our destiny is in the stars” stuff. WC apparently believes that the human species could one day colonize the entire galaxy and exist for trillions of years! The construction of vast and vastly complex artificial intelligences is part of this colonization program. The whole thing sounds like stale science fiction, presumably because it *is* stale science fiction. None of the speculations featured in “Dystopian Futures” will come true. Indeed, this stelliferous utopianism is arguably a kind of religion for atheist philosophers. 

It seems there is a snake in the garden even in Stellar Cornucopia, however, since WC takes the liberty of discussing various ways in which the galactic conquista can go dangerously wrong and actually increase suffering. The idea that cyborgs can become a new oppressed class or start oppressing us is hardly new. The obsession with animal rights (in a galactic future) is more original, and feels very British. The docu advances a number of concrete proposals to avoid the dangers of causing astronomical suffering. They sound distinctly “globalist” and include the formation of a world government, the appointment of special officials tasked with representing animals or future generations, and “liberal democracy” (which is impossible on a global scale). 

No proposal to simply ban and abolish AI is put forward, presumably because the cyborgs are needed for the space colonization to be feasible at all. WC proposes that we should program the AI to show due consideration for “all sentient beings”. I wonder how *that* would turn out, if AI draws certain conclusions from, say, the fact that humans are an acute threat to the biosphere… 

The idea that humans alive today live in a unique time, during which we can all make a difference for eons to come, sounds crypto-religious. The real dystopian future is the one we are already in. The birth-pangs have begun, and one consequence of resource depletion, the climate crisis and what not, is that AI won´t become as advanced as it (perhaps) could have otherwise. 

Which I suppose is a good thing, in its own kind of way!

Road to oblivion

 

Credit: Nordisk Film 

“The Eternal Road” is a somewhat peculiar film produced in Finland and Estonia, with dialogue in both Finnish and English. It´s supposedly based on a true story, but that seems highly unlikely. According to all-knowing Wiki, it´s based on a novel, and I suspect the story is “generic”.

The main character, Jussi Ketola, is a Finnish socialist who manages to escape a fascist death squad by running across the border to the Soviet Union, at the time governed by Stalin´s increasingly repressive regime. Since Ketola (against his will) worked for the anti-Communist Whites during the Finnish Civil War, the exiled Finnish Communists in the Soviet Union suspect him of being a capitalist spy…or at least pretend to think so. Ketola is forced to spy for the Soviet GPU instead, who wants to keep tabs on a Christian utopian commune established by American immigrants somewhere in Soviet Karelia.

The Finnish socialist (who speaks good English after working for a period in the United States) rather opts to become a member of the commune. It´s even implied that he converts to the weird Mennonite-type Christianity practiced by the expatriates. Naturally, the Americans are accused of being foreign agents during Stalin´s great purges, and many are executed at the hands of the GPU. For unclear reasons, Ketola is saved at the last moment by Kallonen (his GPU “control”) and later manages to escape back to Finland. The story ends with Ketola´s step daughter, who somehow managed to survive the Stalin years, telling his story.

The first part of “The Eternal Road” comes across almost as an absurd comedy, with the Finnish Communists in Petrozavodsk turning out to be dandified and more interested in partying with the ladies than in class struggle. As already noted, the American Christian socialists (how did they end up in Stalin´s Russia?) look like the Amish, while Ketola jokes with Kallonen, telling him that he is indeed surveilling the local hog, who looks distinctly suspicious. The second part is more tragic, but it´s hardly a surprise that most of the idealist socialists are deported or shot. Indeed, what *is* strange is that Ketola manages to escape through the border zone!

During the Stalin years, tens of thousands of foreign workers did immigrate to the Soviet Union to escape the Great Depression at home, or in some cases to help the Soviet peoples “build socialism”. Many were caught up in the purges. That – and the conflicts between Communists and Whites in Finland – form the backdrops to “The Eternal Road”. I can´t say I was *that* thrilled by this production, but I suppose it could be of some interest to an extreme niche audience…

Biohackers

Sabine Hossenfelder takes on the "transhumanists" and "biohackers" (a subset of the former) in this YouTube clip. She seems pretty skeptical of the entire concept! Clue: Hitler, Hitler, Hitler...

A parody of cornucopianism

Saudi Arabia wants to build a new megacity in the desert, known as NEOM. Probably for the benefit of foreign tourists (since the sharia will be dispensed with). The most bizarre aspect of the project is a "skyscraper" known as The Line, which will be 500 meters tall, 200 meters wide and 170 km long?!

I´m sure Spiked are happy, but personally I can only go full face palm at this parody of cornucopianism. And oh, 20,000 Bedouin tribesmen will be deported to make room for NEOM, but I´m sure they can return in 20 years or so when this little project will just wind down, God willing!

Saudi Arabia´s new megacity NEOM

Moving closer to reality

 

Previously posted on this blog on September 8, 2021

I wanted to write some kind of 9/11 retrospect, but it didn´t turn out very well, instead it became an extended and somewhat disjointed rant mostly about myself and various topics maybe only I personally give damn about, so instead of posting this on September 11, I´m just going to lay it out here for all it´s worth...

This Saturday, it´s 20 years since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the most spectacular terrorist attacks ever. I´m 20 years older, and yet, in some strange way, it doesn´t feel like 20 years. Maybe 10 years at most. Perhaps not even that! I´m not sure why, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my "main activity" during a large number of these 20 years has been surfing, commenting, blogging and trolling on the World Wide Web. Very often on the same forums, year after year (such as Amazon and comrade ER´s blog). Perhaps I inadvertently got caught in some kind of time warp for two decades? Who knows? 

And yet, I *did* change my opinions, sometimes radically, during these 20 years. I think 9/11 itself was what made me draw the conclusion that maybe the radical leftism of my youth didn´t *quite* work in the new world reality, where Islamist terrorists were threatening the stability of the whole world, not to mention the lives of innocent Western civilians. I unhesitatingly supported the US attack on the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (a strong anti-Islamism had been part even of my most radical convictions). That being said, I never became a "decent leftist", hoping instead for great power cooperation against the Islamists. Great powers as in the US, the EU, Russia and China. I opposed the invasion of Iraq, realizing that very little good would come out of it. And today, 20 years later, a case could obviously be made that very little good came out of the Afghan expedition, either. Except, I suppose, some funny troll pics of Taliban eating halal ice cream!

Otherwise, I think three changes of opinion (or perhaps heart) have been particularly important during these 20 years. First, I realized that atheism and materialism are too simple. While I wouldn´t call myself "religious" or even "spiritual", I´m open to suggestions on these points. And while I would like to believe that my quasi-conversion was (of course) wholly rational and based on the best philosophical arguments, I think it was at bottom psychological. At the time, I really did consider consistent atheist-materialism á la Dawkins´ "The Blind Watchmaker" to make life and the universe meaningless and depressive (not to mention brutish, nasty and short). Perhaps today I would see things somehow differently, but I think it was this (purported) meaninglessness and amorality/immorality of the universe if you follow the atheist-materialist logic that made me cast it aside in favor of a kind of dualism, deism or process philosophy. It´s been quite the ride, reading up on every goddamned (pun intended) religious or spiritual system. I suppose I eventually settled on some kind of Buddhoid semi-Gnostic Neoplatonism, but that´s another story!

Second, I no longer believe in the so-called Western Idea of Progress. I mean, what progress? It´s become increasingly obvious that modern civilization (including its Western centerpiece) won´t and can´t last forever. It will die and disappear, just like its predecessors did. Yes, it did make life better or easier for many people (at least eventually), but that´s irrelevant. So is the fact that it was unique in many ways (yes, really). It will die and disappear anyway. The Western Idea of Progress is just another quasi-religious myth. Or call it religious, if you really don´t like religion. 

Third, I changed my mind on certain political issues, which I don´t wish to discuss here. Let´s just say that I´m no longer a "leftist" in the mainstream sense of that term...but then, it´s no longer obvious what on earth the mainstream sense *even is* these days, so perhaps I can be excused! Is it the bizarre "identity politics" of the "SJWs"? If so, I opposed it already during my most radical period, seeing it as (at best) a petit bourgeois distraction from the real class struggle (and often the real democratic struggles as well). 

But perhaps the real lesson of the past 20 years is that we really can´t mold or remold the world entirely in our image. There are no utopian solutions to our problems and predicaments, indeed no utopias at all. There are certainly no classless, stateless, borderless utopias. But neither are there any capitalist ones, be they neo-liberal or left-liberal. Nor can we go back to an imaginary past to make Nation or Empire-Nation "great again". The drive to remake the world was just another pipe dream, perhaps rooted in a specific form of evangelical Christianity (seriously, why *should* we convert the tribes of the New Guinea Highlands to Baptism or Lutheranism, I mean what´s up with that?) that subsequently became secularized. Instead of talking about "ideals" and "ideologies", perhaps we should start talking about material interests, find pragmatic solutions and realize that a certain subset of the population will always be irredeemable scum (that goes for *all* classes of the population, btw, not just the Lumpenproletariat). Who knows, maybe we can actually get better results if we base our politics, both domestic and foreign, on these more "cynical" and "realistic" premises, rather than on the anachronistic "ideals" of yesteryear...

Some will undoubtedly say that 9/11 killed my youthful dreams of a better future, but since *they* *really* believe, they will refuse to budge. To such people I can only say: if you want to bet on Antifa riots, unsafe vaccines, hard lockdowns, transgender teens, forever wars, rising crime, "climate anxiety therapy", social media censorship and (I suppose) gated communities for you and your rich White peers *for that it what really existing leftist politics have to offer these days*, go ahead and don´t let me stop you, but I have other agendas these days. 

Strictly speaking, 9/11 didn´t kill any dreams. It simply reminded us that we´re only human after all...  

Keeping the Fear alive

James Redfield´s "The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision" (1996) is the sequel to the New Age publishing phenomenon "The Celestine Prophecy" by the same author. Like the first book, it´s written in the form of a novel, but the plot and the characters are just vehicles for the author´s spiritual message. In many ways, the sequel is worse, since the New Age lectures are even longer and extremely repetitive. This is somewhat ironic, since the ideas expounded upon are actually more interesting. They include near-death experiences, heaven and hell, reincarnation and the "soul group" concept. In many ways, "The Tenth Insight" is more explicitly "supernatural" or paranormal than "The Celestine Prophecy". And yet, it feels as if Redfield soon gets lost in his expositions. 

In "The Celestine Prophecy", the first-person narrator (who is unnamed) searched for a lost ancient scripture in Peru, a manuscript containing nine "insights" of a broadly New Age nature. In the sequel, the narrator travels to the Appalachians to find an even more advanced tenth insight. Meanwhile, a group of mad scientists are trying to find paranormal portals in an Appalachian valley, presumably to suck "free" energy out of the astral world and into ours (where it will be harnessed by the military-industrial complex, or some such shadowy cabals). After a series of visionary experiences, the narrator realizes that he is part of a "soul group" who unsuccesfully tried to stop a war against the Indians at the same place 200 years earlier. Brought together by their karma, they must now make another attempt to save the world. 

As already indicated, the message of the book is typically New Age. The eclecticism is there, with American Indian vision quests co-existing with dreams of advanced technology. Gnosticism and the Franciscan "Spirituals" (a radical faction within the Franciscan Order during the Middle Ages) are appropriated for the New Age. The utopian-evolutionary perspective is there, too. So is the pop psychology. Even dark periods in human history have some kind of meaning, and so has bad earthly experiences of individual humans. Indeed, our souls freely choose the conditions under which we incarnate. More peculiar are the author´s polemics against Christian fundamentalist apocalypticism. Or perhaps not, since Redfield grew up in the Deep South. 

I have many objections to "The Tenth Insight", but the main one at a time like this (July 2022) would be the dreams of a soon-to-come universal New Age utopia. Ironically, the character Joel Lipscomb, who represents "Fear", sounds more realistic than the narrator. The hard-nosed Joel manages to almost exactly predict America´s current predicament! 

Of course, we still have to overcome Fear, but presumably it must be done in some other way than chasing after utopian insights in a scenic North American valley... 

A prophecy cancelled

James Redfield´s "The Celestine Prophecy" is a best selling novel from the 1990´s. According to Wiki, the last time somebody bothered checking it had sold 5 million copies worldwide - but I think Wiki until recently gave a much higher, two-digit, number! 

Be that as it may, "The Celestine Prophecy" has even been translated into Swedish ("Den nionde insikten"), and I actually heard about the book during its heyday. I say "actually" (with some surprise), since at the time I was almost entirely uninterested in the New Age, and certainly didn´t bother with the finer details of it (such as who´s who in the new agey publishing business). So I suppose James Redfield´s book really was extremely popular, since even I got to know about it! I did read it around 2000 or so, and recently re-read it (after the film adaptation *purely by chance* showed up in my YouTube recommendations). I admit that I wasn´t particularly moved, but then, I´m still not a New Age believer...

The plot and characters of Redfield´s novel are very weak, and the real point of the story is obviously to convey the New Age spiritual message (or at least part of it). The main character and first person narrator, who remains unnamed but has some similarities to the author, travels to Peru in South America in search of a mysterious manuscript which contains nine "insights" about the human condition. The Catholic Church and the Peruvian military want to destroy all copies of the manuscript. Through various incredible chance events, the narrator meets other seekers looking for the lost document, and these people expound at some length on various New Age themes. The semi-dramatic climax comes at the (wholly fictitious) ruins of "Celestine", an ancient Mayan (!) settlement in the Peruvian jungles, where the narrator and his new friends temporarily gain supernatural powers. 

While Redfield apparently said explicitly that his story is "parable" (it´s a novel, after all), there is no doubt that many New Age believers take scenarios such as this one quite literally. Hidden scriptures, lost civilizations, Catholic conspiracies to suppress The Truth...we heard it all before. Typically New Age is also the complete disregard for archeological or anthropological context, not to mention the heavy anachronisms. The ancient prophecy is written in Aramaic by Mayans in Peru around 600 BC - an impossibility - and yet sounds 100% adapted to 1990´s California! (This is also a form of Anglo-American cultural arrogance, in which the colored races exist only as raw material for Anglo-American fantasies and projections.) While the parable probably works for a New Age audience, it sounds extremely weird to those of us who care about that context thing. Why would the Catholic Church (or the military) in Peru bother with some New Age fluff peddled by gringos? Why would ordinary Peruvians give a damn? 

That being said, I admit that "The Celestine Prophecy" could work as an introduction to some aspects of the New Age. It discusses synchronicity, "energy", mystical experiences, and cosmic evolution towards the Divine. There are also long expositions on pop psychology, sometimes touching on gender relations and child rearing. Jesus is said to have been the first person who could really open up to the evolutionary energies of the Divine. Beauty, especially natural beauty, is seen as central for spiritual enlightenment. The perspective is optimistic. If people learn to practice the nine insights, Earth could become an Utopia, in which a much smaller human population than today live in harmony with nature, while also having access to cities with high technology. Indeed, all production and distribution is automated, making it possible for the utopians to fully concentrate on spiritual evolution. There is constant tension in the book (as in real life New Age) between attempts to sound "scientific" (as when the occult "energy" is used to make plants grow faster under controlled conditions) and a more forthrightly supranaturalist worldview.  

I can´t say I liked "The Celestine Prophecy". It feels very American, White, and privileged middle class. In Peru, the narrator constantly meets upper class people, sometimes foreigners, who own spacious latifundias and are sympathetic to the metaphysical message. While a few of the seekers are poor and/or "Indians", most seem to be well-educated Western scientists or equally well educated Peruvian priests (who live at large missions). No ordinary Joe goes to Peru to cavort with the local smetanka, perhaps telling us something about the intended readership of the novel? And what about the (weird) advice to generously give money to spiritual people? 

But the most obvious problem with the nine insights today is, of course, the strong belief in progress and modernity. The similarity between dreams of free energy (through fusion and so on) and the "energy" from the Divine Source is perhaps not a co-incidence! The utopian vision was difficult to believe in already 30 years ago, and is completely impossible today. There may be this or that spiritual insight even in New Age, who knows, but in general, I´m afraid the Age of Aquarius have been cancelled...